Carole Robin

Co-Founder, Head of Curriculum & Faculty
Author of Connect

Dr. Carole Robin has been helping leaders grow for over 35 years. Most recently she served as the Faculty Director of the Interpersonal Dynamics for High Performance Executives Program and Director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). She received the MBA Distinguished Teaching Award for her work in numerous courses, including Interpersonal Dynamics (the most popular elective course at the GSB for over 45 years).

In addition to her teaching, she has coached and consulted for individuals and groups of high-profile executives for the last fifteen years. Her clients work with her to develop their interpersonal skills, update limiting mental models, and learn to modify their style.

She has become internationally known for her expertise in interpersonal relations and, particularly, experiential small group learning. This type of training gives participants the capacity to become more effective leaders, build higher performing organizations, and have richer, more fulfilling personal and professional relationships.

She consults with a wide range of business, government, and nonprofit clients on leadership development, strategic visioning, and executive team building.

Carole is the co-author of “Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues,” based on the course, published by Penguin Random House and translated into 14 languages.

Elissa Stebbins

On-Site Coordinator

Elissa has worked in various forms of operations and support staff for upwards of fifteen years.  She has been with LIT since its inception, and appreciates deeply the importance of this life-changing work. In addition to her LIT work, Elissa is an actor, a teaching artist, and a founding member of Analog Theatre Company. 

Hannah Knapp

COO

Hannah began her tech startup career as the head of Operations and People for Flixster (acq. by Warner Bros., 2011), seeing the company through many transitions over the course of eight years. During that time, she developed a deep passion for building great company culture, which she took to the next level in 2014, when she cofounded InnerSpace, a non-profit that helped early stage startup founders build happy, purposeful and effective teams. Her current role as COO at Leaders in Tech enables her to share that passion with an even larger swath of the startup community.

In 2017, she cofounded WITHIN Meditation, San Francisco’s first drop-in meditation studio. The studio transitioned fully online at the start of the pandemic and now offers guided meditation classes to individuals and companies globally. Hannah is the mother of two children, and finds that mindfulness and meditation are a lifeline for being the kind of parent, teacher, and entrepreneur she wants to be.

Jacklyn Marwah-Chow

Program Manager

Jacklyn has spent the last decade in operations roles in a variety of industries, ranging from boutique fitness to digital agencies. Jacklyn has a keen eye for the client experience and proactive planning, developing innovative ways to streamline and improve LIT’s event operations. She is passionate about LIT’s mission and is honored to plan, manage, and execute our flagship retreat experiences. You can also find her leading group fitness classes around the Bay Area when she's not running LIT retreats!

Leah McKibbin

Admissions & Programs Support

Leah has worked in virtual administrative and operations support since 2013, after making the shift away from being a production stage manager. Leah has been supporting Leaders in Tech in the departments of events, admissions and outreach since summer of 2021.

Marissa Bell

Executive Director

Marissa Bell is LIT's Executive Director and a Fellows Alumna.  Marissa was inspired to join the team after experiencing the program from the inside as a founder and CEO. She brings with her over 15 years of experience working in startups and a deep desire for helping leaders and their teams flourish. Prior to joining LIT, Marissa was co-founder and CEO of The Seventh Spark Company, focused on bringing innovative digital products to the modern faith space. Prior to founding Seventh Spark, Marissa led product and marketing for subscription-based ecommerce companies ShoeDazzle and Fabletics. 

Marissa graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a BA in Communication. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children, and loyal golden retriever.

Tanna Drapkin

Head of Outreach & Admissions

Tanna is LIT’s Head of Outreach & Admissions. Tanna was an edtech startup product manager and operator before moving to Stanford to run the Persuasive Tech Lab and Behavior Design Lab with behavior scientist BJ Fogg. She launched and ran BJ Fogg’s Academy of Behavior Design serving thousands of global innovators and entrepreneurs for more than 12 years while doing early work on what would become the basis of Fogg’s New York Times bestseller, Tiny Habits.

Tanna loves being at the intersection of designing for positive behavior change and supporting leaders to become more skilled in navigating the messier and most powerful side of human behavior: emotions and interpersonal dynamics.

Tanna lives in the coastal hills of Sonoma County with her husband, their daughter, and a menagerie of rescued creatures, great and small. She has long been active in equine rescue and homeschool education.

Zoe Lin

Program Coordinator

Zoe Lin (she/her) joined LIT in 2024 after working in the startup world in operations and sales and in the music world in concert production. She’s especially excited to be furthering LIT’s incredible mission as she works both behind-the-scenes and onsite at LIT’s retreats. Outside of LIT, she continues to perform throughout the Bay Area and lead music education initiatives. 

Agnes Le

Facilitator

Agnes is a Stanford-trained group facilitator and executive coach who helps leaders increase their impact on their organizations. She also loves to work with great teams to help them find ways to become even greater. She draws upon twenty years experience in the people development field.

Currently, she is a leadership coach in the Executive Education and MSx programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as a group facilitator for the school’s most popular elective course, Interpersonal Dynamics. Formerly, she led the talent functions at various European companies.

A strong believer in a growth-mindset, Agnes has continued to look for ways to step outside her comfort zone: whether it was getting a Stanford MBA, coaching CEOs, hiking to the base camp of Everest, or running 12 marathons and even two ultra-marathons.

Chanchal Garg

Facilitator

Chanchal is an Executive Coach and Facilitator of Conscious Leadership who has never been satisfied with “the way things are.” Through all of her professional and personal experiences, Chanchal is committed to going deep--to the layer where we remember life was meant to be so much better than feeling stressed, anxious, and depleted. Chanchal believes that when we invest in revisiting and nourishing our roots, deeper connections revitalize our workplaces and communities.

Through her many business roles over the years, including business ownership and facilitating Stanford’s interpersonal dynamics graduate business course, she’s gained a big picture perspective around strategic thinking, systems evolution, and interpersonal dynamics for relationship-building. Chanchal helps her clients uproot the beliefs and behaviors that keep them small, and begin to cultivate authentic connections with healthy boundaries and expansive vision.

She guides her clients through transformative growth practices and inspires them to excel for personal and professional empowerment. With a focus on emotional intelligence, connecting across differences, and personal influence skills, her guidance yields true and radical transformation that is true, lasting, and joyful. Chanchal has a keen sensibility and playfulness that helps her clients recognize how instability can be an asset and societal constructs are easier to shift than we think.

Clients have described her style as highly supportive, empathetic, holistic and collaborative--all vital elements for success in today’s environment of conscious disruption and scarcity mindset.

Eduardo Andere

Facilitator

Eduardo is an Executive Coach and facilitator. His leadership mantra is - Elevate people, always - which inspires him to support executives to evolve their leadership style and reach. He works with clients in the US, LatAm and Europe.

In addition to coaching and facilitating, Eduardo has a 20-year career trajectory working in high-performing teams at international companies - from The Boston Consulting Group, to Disney, Walmart, Apple and most recently Meta. This has given him first-hand experience working with executives with varied leadership styles and management best practices. As a result, he has developed a visceral understanding of different work cultures in fast-moving organizations and a keen sense for effective and enduring leadership.

Eduardo received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he now facilitates Interpersonal Dynamics for MBA students. He is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) with the Co-Active Training Institute.

Hugh Cole

Facilitator

Hugh is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Group Psychotherapist and Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor from Chicago Illinois. He facilitates group, individual and relational psychotherapy, clinical supervision and consultation addressing issues related to identity, belonging, grief, substance use and healing from trauma.

He is senior clinician at Howard Brown Health Center, founding member and COO of Chicago Pride Center and co-facilitator in Interpersonal Dynamics T-groups in the leadership programming at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Hugh is an Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life, a member of the trauma consultation group at Womencare Counseling in Evanston, and was the recipient of Loyola University Chicago’s President’s Medallion for community service for his group work in the Chicago LGBTQ+ communities utilizing phenomenological group process.

A lifelong learner, Hugh is currently pursuing certifications in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and applied Jungian Depth Psychotherapy. Hugh comes from a large and ever-growing family, and his passions include art, travel, music, theater, gardening and social justice. He is a loyal servant to his feline mistress, Maybelline the Beauty Queen. Long live the Queen.

Jimena Galfaso

Facilitator

Jimena is an experienced organizational effectiveness consultant, coach, and facilitator. She has deep wisdom about the nature of human experience and group dynamics, and the ability to create the conditions for others to transform and discover new parts of themselves.

She facilitates at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in their Interpersonal Dynamics course and workshops on diversity to incoming MBA students. She works with senior executives in different industries including tech, healthcare, education, agricultural commodity, and real estate.

Through her highly customized programs for companies she helps develop and strengthen critical interpersonal skills. She specializes in awareness building and the effective use of emotions to foster high performance in individuals and teams.

As an executive coach, she works with clients to create a safe and confidential space to work through stressful conflict and get the clarity needed to solve business and interpersonal challenges.

As a coach to teams, her approach centers on themes such as resilience, feedback, influence, and team communication. Ongoing sessions enable participants to improve their individual skill-sets and build a common vocabulary and mindset across the group that optimizes collaboration and effectiveness.

Her EQ workshops include exercises that build trust, awareness of self, empathy, and skills to give and receive feedback. Participants learn how to understand and harness emotions promoting effective communication and an increase of productivity.

Jimena is Certified by New Ventures West as an Integral Coach. She has an MD from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Lisa Stefanac

Facilitator and LIT Founding Faculty Member

Lisa is clinical associate professor of leadership at Chicago Booth where she teaches Interpersonal Dynamics and Team Dynamics. With her extensive background in t-group as an advanced facilitator for the "touchy feely" class at Stanford University, Lisa co-founded the Interpersonal Dynamics program at Booth. Established in late 2019, the program now offers the class to 288 students per year and it is still growing! Lisa received the 2022 Phoenix Award, which is awarded annually to the Booth faculty member who has greatly enriched the learning experience of students.

Alongside her teaching at Booth, Lisa Stefanac is Co-Founder and Partner of KSE Leadership, a privately held leadership consulting firm, and Co-Founder and Partner of Assessing in Action, a leadership and team effectiveness tools business. For the past 20 years, she has focused her work on leadership development, team effectiveness, and talent management at clients ranging from high growth startups to many of the largest companies in the world and across several industries including retail, technology, oil & gas, and digital health. Lisa also engages and advises leaders in government.

Stefanac earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She received the university’s Global Awareness Award and the Herman Family Fellowship, an award recognizing high-potential women entrepreneurs. Stefanac graduated Magna Cum Laude from San Francisco State University with a BA in English literature.

An ex-competitive gymnast and marathon runner who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro — Africa’s highest peak — Stefanac is a visionary who can help individuals surpass their perceived limits.

Ling Thio

Facilitator

Ling Thio is an executive coach and team coach with 15+ years of experience building inclusive teams that are effective, resilient and enjoyable. His holistic and experiential approach effectively drives personal growth, interpersonal skills, and cultural transformation. He is known for his empathic listening, strategic thinking, and authentic/caring style of communication.

Ling facilitates interpersonal leadership courses at Stanford and Haas business schools and teaches group development and inclusion at Matrix Leadership Institute. In addition, he is trained in psychotherapy (Hakomi) and trauma healing (Somatic Experiencing), and holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

As a Software Architect, then as a Co-founder, Ling previously led three Silicon Valley organizations from start-up to acquisition. He lives with his wife in California and has an unofficially adopted son from Côte d’Ivoire.

Peter Hill

Facilitator

For over 20 years, Peter has inspired leaders, founders, groups, and institutions to rise beyond the ordinary. He inspires long-term personal and business success by promoting emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and inner agility.

Peter has created and led more than 500 experiential growth workshops across four continents, focusing on emotional intelligence, leadership and team development, interpersonal dynamics, and communication.

He is an Executive and Leadership (ELD) coach for inbound Executive programs and an Interpersonal Dynamics facilitator for MBA and MSx students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Ricki Frankel

Facilitator

Ricki is a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford GSB. In her role as Lecturer and Coach at the GSB, Ricki facilitates students’ learning in leadership, interpersonal dynamics, organizational power and influence, and management coaching skills. Drawing on her coaching expertise, she recently designed and began teaching a new elective called “Leadership Coaching”, in which MBA students learn skills needed to become coaching managers.

Ricki maintains an executive coaching private practice, where she works with individuals and organizations as they navigate through transitions. Her typical clients are senior professionals and entrepreneurs who have achieved a level of success, and are now seeking “more”: more meaningful engagement, more impact, more business, more purpose – even more fun!

Ricki earned a BA (magna cum laude) in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business.

Terra Winston

Facilitator

Terra is the Principal of inTerract Consulting and Ringleader of inTerractions. She has dedicated her life to helping her clients unleash the potential of each employee.  She is a leadership consultant and executive coach with 20 years of internal and external business consulting experience.  Terra has a flexible style that has driven results in boardrooms and on plant floors, for Fortune 100 companies and small start-ups, alike. 

Terra’s successful approach comes from her unique blend of “hard” and “soft” business skills.   She holds a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, an MBA from Stanford University, and coaching certification from The Coaches Training Institute and the International Coach Federation.  Prior to founding inTerract, Terra worked at Deloitte Consulting as a consultant on process, strategy, and organizational engagements and as a Director at PepsiCo doing traditional HR, diversity & inclusion, and organizational development.

With an expertise in leadership development, facilitation, and DEI (diversity, equity, & inclusion), Terra implements a broad variety of custom solutions for her clients.  As a coach she helps leaders and entrepreneurs make meaningful impact on their organizations.  A sought after speaker, Terra delivers workshops and keynotes that do more than entertain – they give attendees the tools to change behavior.

Zoe Dunning

Facilitator

Zoe’s personal mission is to empower others to make an impact in the world, whether that’s as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, policy advocate or non-profit leader. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise in team leadership, interpersonal dynamics, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and change management.

In her consulting practice, Zoe focuses on leaders and teams in the high tech and life sciences sectors. She is a facilitator for the popular Interpersonal Dynamics course at Stanford Graduate School of Business and an executive coach for their Executive Education and MSx programs.

One of the earliest women to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, Zoe went on to successfully challenge the military’s policies prohibiting the service of LGBTQ+ Americans. Zoe serves on several boards and commissions, including the U.S. Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, the California Veterans Board, and the Advisory Board of VetsinTech, an organization that helps transitioning veterans find employment, education, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the tech sector.

Ada Chen Rekhi

Board Member

Ada Chen Rekhi is co-founder of Notejoy and an executive coach who helps founders scale themselves alongside their teams. She is an entrepreneur and marketer with over a decade of experience in productivity, SaaS and data-driven marketing. Most recently, she was Senior Vice President of Marketing at SurveyMonkey, the leading provider of online surveys through a period of rapid growth leading up to their IPO. Prior to SurveyMonkey, she co-founded Connected, a contact management startup acquired by LinkedIn. While there, she led LinkedIn’s marketing efforts for their Growth team as well as LinkedIn Subscriptions. Ada writes at adachen.com and on Twitter @adachen.

Chase Adam

Board Member

Chase Adam is Leaders in Tech's interim Executive Director. Previously, Chase was a co-founder of Watsi, Babylon, and Meso. Earlier in his career he launched a nonprofit loan fund for small businesses in San Francisco, started a health program in Haiti, and served in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. LIT changed Chase's life when he participated in a retreat in 2019 and he's passionate about helping the organization reach more people.

Joe Greenstein

Co-Founder & Board Chair

Joe Greenstein is the co-founder of Leaders in Tech.  Previously, Joe was the co-founder & CEO of Flixster & RottenTomatoes (acq by TimeWarner) and played early leadership roles at Edusoft (acq by Houghton-Mifflin) and CoreMetrics (acq by IBM).  Joe has tried to be helpful as an angel investor, advisor, coach or board member to over 60 startups.  Joe lives in SF with his wife Rachel, son Shane, and several surviving houseplants.

Ryan Caldbeck

Board Member

Ryan is the COO of Dune, a data infrastructure company serving web3 backed by Union Square Ventures, Coatue and others. Ryan Caldbeck is also the co-founder and Chairman of CircleUp, an investment platform powered by technology. Ryan served as CEO from 2011 through 2020, then as Executive Chairman until 2021. He co-founded CircleUp (www.circleup.com) after seven years as an investor with consumer-focused growth equity firms TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital. Ryan received his MBA from Stanford and a dual BA from Duke. CircleUp has been honored as one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Data Science, LendIt’s Small Business Lending Platform of the Year, and FinTech Breakthrough’s Best Institutional Investment Platform, and was named to the CNBC Disruptor 50, CB Insights FinTech 250, Forbes FinTech 50 (Most Innovative Financial Technology Companies), KPMG 50 Best Fintech Innovators, and Entrepreneur’s Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America.In addition, Ryan has been named a “Power Broker in Beauty”, by Women’s Wear Daily and a “Titan of Retail” by Bloomberg. He is also a winner of the 2013 40 Under 40 M&A Advisor Recognition Award and a 2014 40 Under 40 San Francisco Business Times Honoree.